As far back as 1971, Mark was aware of the staggering parallels between Todd Rundgren and John Lennon.

             "The Ballad of Todd Rundgren."(1971)   

Like a send-up of the famous image of Lennon at his piano singing "Imagine" (also 1971) this album cover shows Todd sitting at a piano with a noose round his neck. The image is one of execution, or suicide.

This was the album Mark left in his display at the Sheraton hotel when he checked out for the final time.

By 1973, Todd Rundgren was experimenting with mirror images and the idea of splitting personalities and multiple identities:

  "A Wizard/A True Star" (1973 )

On Todd's album, "A Wizard/A True Star", the front and back covers show a face splitting and breaking up into two, possibly three. Everything on the cover is breaking up and tumbling down. The front and back covers are exact images of each other, while inside, Todd is pictured in a mirror-tiled bathroom, surrounded by multiple split images.

  "Walls & Bridges" (1974)   

Lennon himself uses similar ideas on his "Walls & Bridges" album of 1974, with its cover sliced into 3 fold-over strips that make composite and alternative pictures of Lennon's face. One combination of the fold-over strips looks like a white plaster cast or death mask.

On the album's inner sleeve, he is wearing multiple pairs of spectacles, as if offering a pun on seeing things clearly.

    "Todd" (1974)    

In this 1974 album, Todd Rundgren is beginning to experiment with the idea of broadcast signals, made up of countless fragments, much like a picture on a tv screen is broken into hundreds of lines, or a computer graphic is made of millions of pixels. The inner sleeve contained a large computer generated image of Todd's face made up of hundreds of names from his fan-club directory.   Mark was devastated to find that his name was not part of the picture - it was as if Todd had ignored him.

By 1976, and the "Faithful" album, Todd is openly parodying The Beatles' "White Album", even doing a 'faithful' cover version of Lennon's "Strawberry Fields".

                   "Faithful" (1976)    " White Album" (1968)

To Mark Chapman, the message is clear: Todd is canceling out the creative force of the Beatles with his own genius. And he is telling fans like Mark Chapman to stay faithful to him.

But to Mark Chapman, "The White Album" has other, more sinister associations: it is claimed that the Beatles' songs "Helter Skelter" and "Little Piggies" inspired Charles Manson to murder Sharon Tate and others in 1969. Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate's husband, had used the Dakota apartments as a setting for his film "Rosemary's Baby", about a woman giving birth to the Devil's child.

When Chapman stands outside the Dakota on December 6th, he is convinced Mia Farrow walks past him - and she had played the role of the mother in Polanski's film. Mark Chapman takes this as another example of incredible synchronicity, a sure sign he is in the right place, and it is the right time.

"The Hermit of Mink Hollow". (1978)                                        "Imagine" (1971)

On the 1978 album, "The Hermit of Mink Hollow", Todd stares out from a TV screen. Mark picks up the broadcast loud and clear. It mirrors Lennon's "Imagine" album, where his face is fading in or fading out, because the signal is not yet at full strength. This idea of television and broadcast signals becomes a dominant feature of Todd Rundgren's work over the next few years, and Mark Chapman waits eagerly for each new signal.

    "Adventures in Utopia" (1980)   

Released in February 1980, this album is all about television; it is intended to be launched alongside a television project Todd is working on. The record opens with a test signal, the inner sleeve is designed to be a TV broadcast Test Card, complete with guidelines to make fine tuning adjustments. For Mark, the message is clear: the broadcast just needs a little fine-tuning; just hold on a while longer and the signal will become crystal clear. 

And the main image on the front is of new life, or perhaps death: a silver cyberpod, or a sarcophagus floating in space.

        "Deface the Music" (1980)                                              "With The Beatles" (1963)                                                                             

By late 1980, Todd has released his "Deface The Music" album. This whole album, the cover and the individual songs, is a parody of the "With The Beatles" album issued in 1963.

For Mark Chapman, here is Todd telling him, as clearly as he could, and just before the publicised issue of Lennon's "Double Fantasy" album, that The Beatles, and Lennon in particular, have to be "de-faced". The idea of death is so strong: the dead faces on the marble busts, the sombre black and white of the design. This album triggers Mark to go to New York and commit the murder.

(For more information on Todd Rundgren...go to http://toddrundgren.homestead.com